WHS encourages entrepreneurship with new grade seven CTF project

WHS student Blade Ball and staff member Pearl-Ann Gooding mixed up a unique beverage for the Commando Dragons on Friday, March 31, as part of Ball’s Dragon’s Den style business pitch. He created a refreshing mint lemonade using fresh ingredients he purchased with his loan. Ball even utilized resources from within the school by adding fresh spearmint from the WHS tower garden to his concoction.

Grade seven students from Wainwright High School (WHS) had an opportunity to become young entrepreneurs this week as they developed and operated their own small businesses as part of a new Career Technology Foundations (CTF) project. The project was created by CTF teacher Jenny Thomson in an effort to help teach the students the skills required to start a business, including budgeting, creating a brand and developing a product.

Each group of students was required to create a unique beverage using a small $10 to $30 loan provided by Thomson. The students were then given an opportunity to sell their beverages within the school during lunch and after school hours. After a week of selling their products to their peers, the students were allowed to keep any profit they made, as long as their loan was repaid.

Thomson says that the project coincides with the new CTF curriculum, which involves teaching practical skills to students so they may start to focus on their career path earlier in life.

“It’s kind of a new implementation of a curriculum where (the Government of Alberta) wants to involve life skills and practical skills, along with hands-on learning and building opportunities,” said Thomson.

“The Career Technology Foundations is a starting point in junior high school to kind of start to develop a feel for things that they might want to do career-wise as they move their way through the grades. When they transition into grade 10 it becomes Career Technology Studies, and that’s when they really start to make strands or pathways. (The Government of Alberta) wants assignments that are quite well-rounded, and this one just took right off. It’s just a whole bunch of curricular things put into one project, and the kids are crazy excited about it.”

Thomson also included local business owners in the project by incorporating a Dragon’s Den style business pitch opportunity for the students. Daines and Daubney owner Dana Smith and Tim Hortons owner Tara Roggensack took on the role of the Commando Dragons on Friday, March 31, by visiting the school and taking time to listen to each group’s business pitch. The Commando Dragons could then decide whether or not they wanted to invest their money into the students’ businesses.

“They were both ecstatic and it took only minutes for them to reply to me saying they absolutely wanted to be involved. You could tell by the way they were questioning and grilling the kids that they knew exactly what they were doing, and the kids recognize that as well,” said Thomson.

“These two ladies are just so excited about it and it’s their own money that they’re investing. I can give the kids their loans, but we are a public school and I can’t just hand out money to kids like that. They knew coming into this that they would have to invest with their own money or their own resources, and they still weren’t deterred at all, so we’re very thankful for that.”

Both Smith and Roggensack agree that the project is extremely worthwhile for the students at WHS, and they hope to see grade seven classes continue to participate and learn the same valuable life skills in the future.

“(The project) is just so practical and meaningful. A lot of times, students will say ‘well, I’m learning it, but when am I ever going to use that in the real world,’ and I think that this has a lot of really practical meaningful applications for them down the road in whatever field they choose,” said Smith.

“They’ve been kept within reasonable budgets and reasonable loan amounts so it’s actually achievable and they’re going to be able to be successful at the end of it, that’s important too,” added Roggensack.